Despite rising calls for social science knowledge in the face of climate change, too few sociologists have been engaged in the conversations about how we have arrived at such perilous climatic circumstances, or how society can change course. With its attention to the interactive dimensions of social order between individuals, social norms, cultural systems and political economy, the discipline of sociology is uniquely positioned to be an important leader in this conversation. In this paper I suggest that in order to understand and respond to climate change we need two kinds of imagination: 1) to see the relationships between human actions and their impacts on earth’s biophysical system (ecological imagination) and 2) to see the relationships within society that make up this environmentally damaging social structure (sociological imagination). The scientific community has made good progress in developing our ecological imagination but still need to develop a sociological imagination. The application of a sociological imagination allows for a powerfully reframing of four key problems in the current interdisciplinary conversation on climate change: why climate change is happening, how we are being impacted, why we have failed to successfully respond so far, and how we might be able to effectively do so. I visit each of these four questions describing the current understanding and show the importance of the sociological imagination and other insights from the field of sociology. I close with reflections on current limitations in sociology’s potential to engage climate change and the Anthropocene.

The changing climate poses an unprecedented challenge to the human imagination. It seems impossible to imagine the reality of what is happening to the natural world, impossible to visualize the social, political and economic consequences of these changes, and impossible to envision truly changing course. Imagination is power especially in a time of crisis. Right now in the face of climate change and the Anthropocene1 more generally there are two forms of imagination that both the interdisciplinary community and the general public need. We need the ability to perceive the relationships between human actions and their effects on earth’s biophysical system – call it an ecological imagination. And we need to be able to see the relationships within society that make up this environmentally damaging social structure. This second form of visualization — a central concept in the field of sociology — was first discussed over 70 years ago by C.W. Mills. Mills calls it the sociological imagination. When it comes to our ecological imagination the scientific community has made great progress. Over four decades atmospheric scientists have progressively detailed increasingly grim assessments of how the changing climate is altering the biophysical world around which human social systems are organized. Natural scientists have specified reductions in greenhouse gases needed to circumvent catastrophic climate change. Despite these warnings however, human social and political response to climate change remains wholly inadequate Palsson et al 2013). We have made little progress in understanding how to actually change our course. For this, we need the second form of imagination – the ability to see the relationships within society that make up our environmentally damaging social structure.